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Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Film Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

At the top of
a funicular in the heart of Zubrowka, a fictional Eastern country soon to be
subsumed by World War 2, lays the magnificent Grand Budapest Hotel: a hotel
that attracts the finest aristocrats from across Europe who flock to spend time
there.This is mostly due to the
diligent and enigmatic concierge Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), who has a series of liaisons with his most esteemed
guests – as long as they are ageing, rich and blonde.

One of these
guests is Madame D (Tilda Swinton),
a wealthy widow who is found dead one morning in the eponymous hotel due to being
poisoned.Gustave and his lobby boy,
Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori) the
narrator of the plot, rush to the old woman’s wake to discover that she has
bequeathed the priceless painting Boy
With Apple to him.This causes
outrage amongst her extended family that then accuses him of murder, leading
Zero to hide the painting back in the hotel as Gustave is taken to jail.

Zero must then
help Gustave break free from prison and escape a sadistic private detective (Willem Defoe) who is trying to catch
him and return him to Madame D’s greedy grandchild Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis (Adrien Brody).Monsieur Gustave must then enlist the help of
other prestigious concierges from a secret network that they are all a part of to
help him clear his name.

To fully
recognise all of the acting talent would give away too much of the plot, but it
is worth noting that Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law,
Owen Wilson, Saoirse Ronan and others are all involved… My one complaint would be that the film hugely fails the Bechdel Test - but at least it contains no explicit sexism...

The undeniable
star of the show is Ralph Fiennes as the articulate fop Gustave H.I’ve never seen Fiennes give such a funny
performance and many of the biggest laughs (and there were many) come from his
deadpan delivery.

Director Wes Anderson has
managed to forge a career out of blockbuster budgets and casting but with
‘indie’ aesthetics that students all around the world subject to relentless 'auteur' criticism for coursework and dissertations.But he is the exact opposite of an auteur precisely because his projects need so much
collective talent to work.

The mise-en-scène
that Wes Anderson and long-time collaborator Robert Yeoman have
created is, as always, an absolute joy to behold.Their frequent fast track pans, overhead
close-ups and quick zooms are all framed across different aspect ratios to
create one of the most stylish blockbusters of the year (and it’s only
March).Their imitable style is easy to parody but only
the most hardened cynic would disagree that it is a pleasure to watch.

The film
employs the classic family-drama-amidst-a-national-crisis narrative device to
show Gustave and his Hotel ‘family’ fighting the emotionless and greedy Desgoffe-und-Taxis
family, all set against a fascist occupation of the country that is a minor
annoyance at best to the central characters.The loyalty that the concierge shows to his lobby boy as they are
questioned on a train by armed thugs is one of the most tender moments in the
whole film.

Due to the
gorgeous cinematography and camera work it would be foolish to wait to see this
on a small screen – it is a cinematic film made for the cinema that I cannot
wait to see again.